


The Clockwork Devil

by greygerbil



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Horror, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2019-08-08 17:53:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16434092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greygerbil/pseuds/greygerbil
Summary: Yuuri's relationship with Victor is going great until he overhears a strange conversation between his boyfriend and Georgi. Something seems to be wrong with Victor and soon Yuuri realises that Victor is keeping some dangerous and downright unbelievable secrets.





	1. Chapter 1

“Nothing broke so far. It should be fine for a few more weeks.”

“Are you sure?”

Yuuri dried his hair with a towel as he glanced at the door, which stood slightly ajar. Victor’s and Georgi’s quiet voices coming from the changing room had only just become audible as the splash of the shower subsided.

“Don’t worry so much, Gosha.”

“I still don’t think you should go to Hasetsu.”

“I want to see everyone this summer. Considering,” Victor paused and finally continued, like he had given up on finding the right words for what he wanted to say, “ _this_ , don’t you think that’s a good idea?”

Georgi sighed.

“I understand. I’ll still keep some springs ready, though.” With that said, he raised his voice by a marked notch. “Are you and Yuuri coming to Mila’s ice show on Saturday?”

The conversation continued on in this less cryptic way until Yuuri heard a door close and their voices were gone. He rubbed his face dry, wondering what the whispering had been about. Springs sounded like something mechanical was involved and apparently it had broken? He wasn’t aware that Georgi had any talent for fixing technical stuff, but to be fair, he didn’t know Georgi that well. Maybe he did build old transistor radios or clocks in his free time, though Yuuri also had no idea why Victor would be interested in that.

Or maybe he had misunderstood. Though Yuuri had taken Russian in college, Georgi had some Northern dialect that he fell into when he wasn’t paying attention, which made it infinitely harder for him to parse what Georgi was saying. Victor also spared Yuuri his most colloquial Russian and spoke more slowly and clearly when he knew Yuuri was around. They could have been talking about Victor’s skating boots or laptop breaking down, too.

By the time he was out of the changing room to join Victor in front of the doors of the Sports Champions Club, Yuuri had put the conversation out of his mind.

-

“Thank you for letting me stay here. It’s a beautiful house.”

Georgi smiled at Yuuri’s mom as she placed a cup of tea in front of him on the table. He’d flown overnight and the shadows under his eyes made it look like he hadn’t slept much on the way.

“No problem at all. It’s fun to meet Victor’s friends, they’re usually very lively,” Yuuri’s father supplied.

Victor laughed. “I hope Georgi isn’t going to be as much of a handful as Yuri was. He’s a bit too old for that.”

“I don’t plan on making trouble,” Georgi said, blowing on the hot tea. “I just really wanted to see Hasetsu. Victor made it seem like a very inspiring place, especially with the forest surrounding it – and the sea! I like being close to nature. A lot of the beaches near St. Petersburg aren’t even safe for swimming, sadly.”

When Georgi had followed Yuuri’s parents to his room after a little more idle chatting about the landscape and landmarks around the town, Yuuri turned to Victor.

“Did Georgi and Chris get into a fight?”

Victor looked at him over the rim of his own tea cup with a confused smile.

“Not that I know of. Trust me, if Georgi was fighting with his boyfriend, you’d know. Everyone would. He takes that sort of thing to heart.” Victor chuckled. “Why?”

“I just think it’s strange he’s here and not in Zurich. And if he’d wanted to come here, why didn’t he fly with us? We only arrived two days ago.”

“Oh…” Victor shrugged. “He was probably busy before. I guess he wants to go onto a spiritual journey by himself? Explore the woods on his lonesome. You know he’s all about artistic stuff like that. He can always visit Chris later.”

That wasn’t wrong, but given the choice, Yuuri would still have pegged Georgi for someone who’d rather spend as much time as possible with his boyfriend. Of course, Victor had known him for much longer, so he’d have a better idea of Georgi’s habits.

-

Yuuri had gone to bed early that evening, exhausted from a long bout in the gym, which was the beginning to getting him back in his best competition shape. When he woke up again, the sky outside the window was black as a void and the sound of rain pattered muffled against the glass. Next to him, the mattress was still empty.

Yuuri stared at the ceiling half-asleep until the realisation that he had to go to the bathroom crept on to him. For a moment, he tried his best to doze off again, but now that the thought was in his head, he couldn’t let it go. With a groan, Yuuri fought his way from under the covers. His feet hit the cool tatami mats that gave a quiet rustle under his weight.

His eyes were barely open as he dragged himself to the bathroom. After a minute of squinting into the light over the mirror and then splashing cold water on his hands in the sink, he was just awake enough to glance at the clock and wonder why Victor wasn’t in bed with him at two in the morning, and where else he could be.

A dim glow at the end of the hallway gave a hint. It was the room his parents had prepared for Georgi. Yuuri walked towards the light flowing out of the gap between the wall and the sliding door. Victor and him wanted to go jogging together in the morning, so maybe he should tell him to come to bed. He might have lost track of time and a tired Victor could get draconic at the rink and in the gym, as Yuuri knew by now, so he’d prevent that if he could.

His mouth was already half opened when Yuuri glanced into the room and all the words died on his tongue, confusion stifling them. Victor sat shirtless with his back to the door, Georgi leaning down before him, one hand on his shoulder, and his head apparently leaning against Victor’s chest, from what little Yuuri could make out from this angle.

“You’re right. Something is wrong. I have to take a closer look to see what it is, though.”

“I had a feeling you would say that,” Victor gave back quietly. “We just fixed it, too.”

“I told you this would happen...”

There was something wrong with Georgi’s voice, Yuuri realised. It was that same deep tone he knew, but there was a lilt hiding beneath, a hint of a trill that melted the words and gave his sentences an arrhythmic melody, as if his voice wasn’t really meant to form human words.

“It’s worth it.”

Georgi rose up, gaze directed away from the door to one side of the room, looking at something obscured from Yuuri’s view. Yuuri’s heart jumped into his throat.

Georgi’s eyes were entirely black with a razor-thin, watery blue shine outlining what should have been the borders of his iris and pupils. His mouth, slightly opened, sported canine fangs and as he licked his lips with a nervous dart of his tongue it was entirely too long and came to a sharp point.

“I will do what I can to make it right,” the thing that was apparently Georgi muttered. “But I can’t keep it going forever.”

“I know. Don’t worry, Gosha, that’s just the way it is.”

Victor moved to turn his head and Yuuri spun on his heels and ran. It was not the fear of being discovered that drove him; it was that, after seeing Georgi, he couldn’t bear the thought of seeing a Victor that looked equally horrifying.

His naked feet were quiet on the wooden ground, but his toes met with something big and light, and he cried out in pain as his knee hit the floor while his ankle was ensnared by a hard line. Staring, he found that he had kicked right into the handle of a plastic bucket, which he had toppled together with the mop standing by its side.

Perfect silence followed. Yuuri held his breath, one hand wrapped around his knee, which was throbbing with pain, eyes fixed on the door at the end of the hallway. It slid open slowly. In the twilight, he could only make out two dark shapes.

“Yuuri?” Victor asked, baffled. “Are you alright?”

“Y-yeah,” Yuuri said, staring at Georgi as the two shadowy figures moved closer. “I went to the bathroom. I just stumbled in the was dark. I guess... I guess I’m not really awake yet.”

Victor reached for the light switch and Yuuri blinked up at the two of them, heart hammering. However, as his eyes got used once more to the electric glare, Victor and Georgi were no different than ever. Victor was wearing a 2014 Olympics shirt and smiling impishly down at him as he offered him a hand. Georgi looked possible a little less severe than usual, even, because his hair was down and hanging over his forehead. His eyes were the calm blue of a still ocean, the white restored, and his teeth were blunt as he opened his mouth to ask: “Did you hurt yourself?”

His voice was back to normal, too.

“Just scraped my knee,” Yuuri muttered as Victor pulled him to his feet. “Uhm, it’s fine.”

“Let’s go to bed before you find a way to skip the next season due to injury,” Victor joked. Turning to his rink mate, he gave him a brief nod. “Sleep well, Gosha.”

“Good night,” Georgi said to the both of them, his gaze lingering for a second before he walked back down the hallway.

-

Yuuri didn’t sleep much that night, instead finding himself watching Victor’s face and searching it for any mark of the transformations that he had seen in Georgi. Really, there was no reason to assume something similar would happen, except for the fact that the two had been together and Victor didn’t seem to have found the sight strange at all, and yet...

However, as Yuuri’s brain grew weary and sluggish by the time the morning hours crept on, he was beginning to think he must have dreamed both their odd conversation and the way Georgi’s face had morphed. None of it made a lick of sense, after all, and Victor stayed perfectly human-looking until Yuuri finally dozed off as sunlight crawled pale into the room. Despite his own conviction that he had been dreaming, though, the next couple of nights, Yuuri pretended to fall asleep before Victor, waiting nervously for him to shift out of bed and go to Georgi’s room again, doing whatever it was they had done before Yuuri had interrupted them.

It never happened. Victor laid by his side whenever Yuuri startled awake in the night, arm wrapped tightly around Yuuri’s side, his face buried in his hair, affectionately holding his hand. It was a sweet, close embrace, almost too warm, and the stupid waking nightmare he must have had never seemed further away than when he felt Victor’s steady heartbeat against his back like this.

-

By the third night after Georgi’s arrival, Yuuri was both pacified enough and too tired to keep up his vigil. Victor and him had gone to bed earlier that evening, not to sleep, and once they parted still panting and smiling, Yuuri felt himself slipping away as Victor lazily kissed his neck.

He woke up in the dark of the night to find the spot next to him empty and lukewarm, the last remains of Victor’s warmth fading from the mattress. With his hand gripping the sheet, Yuuri stared up at the ceiling. Victor had probably gone to the bathroom, he told himself, over and over again, and to think anything else was just unreasonable. As the minutes ticked by, though, he felt his stomach tighten into a ball as the images from Georgi’s room that he’d tried to push into the dustbin of his memory flitted back before his mind’s eye, and finally, he swung his legs out of the bed and sneaked down the hallway.

Georgi’s door was closed this time, but he could hear quiet voices behind. Who else would be in his room but Victor? Yuuri hesitated. Really, it was no business of his what Victor and Georgi discussed if they didn’t want to include him. It wasn’t like he worried that Victor was unfaithful or anything and they were old friends who probably had their share of secrets, as all old friends did. If he had dreamed that last encounter – and he must have –, he would end up making himself look needlessly distrustful.

His conscience did not manage to recruit his curiosity in the endeavour of returning to bed, though. Yuuri straightened and hurried past the room and out of a small side entrance of the inn. The spring night greeted him with a stiff breeze blowing in from the sea carrying the smell of salt. He pulled the door shut behind himself, the key that had stuck inside in hand, and rounded a wing of the house, pushing past the bamboo that was starting to grow in again, until he was at the window looking into Georgi’s room. It was opened a few inches and Yuuri moved quietly to the edge, peering inside the room.

The scene before him had Yuuri strangled silent with terror. Georgi, his eyes black with that flickering blue glow in them again, stood over Victor, who sat in a chair in the middle of the room. With one hand, Georgi had buried the blade of a carving knife halfway in Victor’s chest. Victor looked on at this display with mild displeasure. Only a few drops of blood trickled down his stomach as Georgi methodically pulled the knife upwards and then reached in with his second hand to pull aside the skin and muscle to make a gap. A sparse stain of red colour smeared the metal of the blade.

There was a gaping dark hole in Victor’s chest where there should have been flesh and breastbone. Georgi put the knife away and reached inside, making Victor flinch. When he pulled back, he was holding a chunk of flesh and metal that convulsed in his hand, connected to the hole in Victor’s chest by thick veins. With all the bits of copper and iron, springs and gears, and even a little clock interface in it, it took Yuuri a moment to realise that what he was looking at was a heart.

“A few days longer and it would have given out,” Georgi muttered, reaching towards the table where he had placed the knife. Yuuri saw now that next to it were tools: a fine saw and several tiny screwdrivers as well as assorted metal bits and pieces that looked like they belonged into the workshop of an antique restoration specialist.

“I try not to think about it,” Victor answered.

Georgi turned his back to the window and rummaged between the parts, still holding the pulsing heart with one hand. He lifted one of the small screwdrivers, fitting it experimentally against a metal cover, and then began to move his wrist. When he pulled the cover off, he revealed a chamber full of intricate unmoving wheels and began to poke around in it. Finally, he wrenched one of the wheels free, chose another one from the table, and closed the new wheel in his fist. With a gentle incline of his head, he leaned his mouth against his own curled fingers and muttering a sing-song in a language that sounded like nothing Yuuri had heard in his life. He opened his fist and blew on his palm. Like breath in cold air, a black mist ghosted over his hand.

When Georgi had fitted the gear back into its place, there was a click and a whirr and the wheels all began to spin. Victor gave a sigh. Georgi fastened the metal cover again.

“Much better. Thank you, Gosha.”

“I told you, I can’t promise it will last,” Georgi said quietly as he widened the gash in Victor’s flesh again and buried the ugly, patched-up heart deep in the hollow of his chest cavity.

“I know. Just let me pretend to be human for a little while longer.”

Holding the sides of the hole in Victor’s body together, Georgi grabbed something from the table that Yuuri recognised as a thick sewing needle when it glinted in the light. Georgi jammed it into the soft skin between his own thumb and forefinger and, pulling it back, the blood he had drawn followed the tip of the needle like red thread. When he sewed Victor’s gaping wound shut, the flesh melted together as effortlessly as hot wax as Georgi pushed and drew the needle through.

With his knees shaking, Yuuri got up and fled once more.


	2. Chapter 2

As Yuuri laid in bed clutching the blanket, he tried to figure out what he had just witnessed. Victor was not human – that much he believed after seeing Georgi cut open his chest spilling hardly any blood and Victor sitting there chatting as Georgi worked on his still-beating heart.

What _was_ he, though? Some Frankenstein’s monster that Georgi had built out of flesh and clock parts? Some creature of legend that Georgi kept in thrall by the magic he worked on the parts he had stuck in Victor’s heart?

But perhaps he was letting Georgi’s gruesome face mislead him. Victor had never seemed like he was afraid of Georgi or felt like Georgi had any authority over him, not even while Georgi was holding his heart in his hand. Then again, he had also hid all of this, whatever word there could be for it, from Yuuri. Who could say what lurked behind Victor’s smile? What else didn’t Yuuri know about him? The man he had thought he had learned so much about over the past year seemed suddenly like a perfect stranger to him as he laid there in the dark.

The door opened and Yuuri stared at Victor.

“Where were you?” he burst out.

“Just went outside for a bit.” Victor smiled. “I couldn’t sleep and it’s such a nice night,” he added, as he slid under the blanket with him. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

His upper body was naked and the skin over his chest smooth without a trace of scarring or stitches. Yuuri stared at it, his conviction wavering once more. It must have been a dream because none of what he had seen could feasibly be reality, and yet, it did not feel like the hazy, unfocused memories that sleep left him with. There were no reasonable explanations. Was he going insane?

In the dark, with Victor’s arms wrapped around him, Yuuri decided that he had to make sure his head wasn’t playing tricks on him. As much as the thought scared him, if he kept running from this, he would never know for sure and he would keep second-guessing everything around him, especially his fiancé. There was no option here, he had to know.

-

Yuuri had never been someone who schemed. If he lied it was most likely by omission and often because he didn’t know what to say or how to do so rather than because he was actively trying to deceive. He also didn’t know what he should be looking for in terms of tangible proof. The best evidence he’d seen so far was buried in Victor’s closed chest and hidden behind Georgi’s perfectly normal face.

An idea where to start came to him as he filled the dishwasher after breakfast and, turning to the sink to rinse a pot, noticed that the biggest of the knives in the knife block was missing. His heart stumbled over its next beats. Quickly, he dropped the pot he was holding and checked that the knife wasn’t in the dishwasher, then threw open every drawer he could think of where someone might have misplaced it. The knife was gone.

Could Georgi have used one of their knives? Yuuri hadn’t paid much attention to what sort of blade he had held in his hand, more focused on the fact that it was inches deep in Victor’s chest cavity. Maybe Georgi hadn’t wanted to risk bringing something in his luggage that might raise an eyebrow on an international flight, even if he did know coming here that he would be cutting Victor open, as Yuuri thought he must have from the few bits of conversation he had caught between them. Perhaps Georgi had just guessed, rightly, that he could find or buy something to suit his purposes here, anyway. Regardless, he hadn’t seemed to have gotten a chance to put the knife back yet.

If he could find the knife in Georgi’s room, that would be a start, Yuuri decided, real proof that he hadn’t hallucinated that scene last night. However, he would have to keep Georgi and Victor away from him, out of the house if possible.

The opportunity fell in his lap as they got ready to go to the rink. His shoes in hand, Yuuri hesitated and then tried for a conversational tone as he looked at Victor, dangling his sneakers from the tips of his fingers.

“I just remembered, I meant to send Phichit an old practice plan of mine. He’s been asking for it a few times now, I should do that before I leave.”

“We’ll wait,” Victor offered.

“No, go ahead. You know the way, you can show Georgi,” Yuuri said, quickly. “I’ll have to find it first. It’s probably buried in some folder.”

Victor glanced briefly at Georgi, who gave a shrug.

“Then I’ll be the Hasetsu tourist guide for now!” Victor joked as he leaned over and pecked Yuuri on the lips. “See you in a bit.”

Yuuri watched them from a window to make sure they were around the corner of the street before he hurried down the hallway and slid the door of Georgi’s room open. Every time he had looked in here this week, he had seen something horrific and completely impossible, but right now, it was just a room he had known all his life.

He closed the door behind himself and took a look around. Something bulged out the blanket of the futon right under the pillow. He stepped over and carefully folded it back, his heart in his throat. Instead of guts and metal pieces, however, he found a faded, crumpled shirt. He could just see the Swiss skating team logo on it between the folds of fabric. Georgi must have taken it from Chris.

Yuuri let his fingertips brush over Chris’ shirt. Did he know what Georgi was? He couldn’t say for sure, of course, but Yuuri doubted it. Chris and him had been friends since Yuuri had first entered the junior competition circuit. Chris would have told him about Georgi and most certainly about Victor if he’d had any idea, which meant Victor had been lying to one of his oldest friends, too. It was obvious Georgi was smitten with Chris, but what did that actually entail if he was some sort of fanged monster? Was Chris in danger?

And what did it mean for Victor to love Yuuri if he wasn’t even human?

Yuuri looked under the pillow, seeing nothing out of the ordinary, and then put everything back how he had found it. Next, he turned his attention to the wardrobe, which was still empty apart from a couple of folded towels. This left only Georgi’s black suitcase.

He dug through layers of clothes and books, two romance novels, judging by the pastel covers, and Nabokov’s _Pale Fire_. At first, he missed the unusual weight of a folded shirt when he lifted it, but it shifted weirdly against his palm. As he took the halves of cloth apart, he found himself staring at the missing knife. There was even still a trace of blood on it, a dark red smear that hadn’t been cleaned by the shirt’s fabric sliding against the metal.

Breathing deeply in and out to steady himself, Yuuri grabbed his phone and took a picture of the knife. If he had evidence that he could look at whenever he wanted, maybe he could finally put aside the thought that his grasp on reality was slipping. He folded the shirt over the knife and tucked it back into place.

The mechanical parts and tools were in a brown bag that Yuuri emptied on the floor to take another picture before meticulously replacing the assortment of tiny gears, springs, cogs, levers, cranks and screws. He was almost ready to pack up again when he noted another small satchel, this one stuffed with dried herbs and flowers and smooth round stones of several colours. There was also a vial with a clear fluid, maybe water, and another filled with something suspiciously red. Yuuri didn’t touch them, but he took one more picture.

After he had given his best to restore order to the suitcase, Yuuri closed it up and left the room. He had no idea how he felt as he pulled on his shoes. It was reassuring he could trust his own mind. Either the things he had just found really were there or he was so far down the rabbit hole that there was no saving him, anyway. That wasn’t really cause to calm down, though, because if what he had seen was real then Victor and Georgi really were something else than human and also, _magic existed_. After stomaching that total upset of the rules of the universe Yuuri had always believed in, he found himself running through the conversations he had heard as he made his way to the Ice Castle. Hadn’t it sounded like something was wrong with Victor? Georgi had said multiple times that he wasn’t sure he could fix ‘it’ for much longer –Victor’s heart, obviously, nothing else made sense. Whatever Victor was, they wouldn’t have put so much effort into repairing his heart if it wasn’t urgent, right? Georgi had flown out to Japan for this. Yuuri felt ill as he considered what this could mean. It was just one enormous secret piled on top of another.

-

When Yuuri opened the door to the rink, silence spanned around him. Victor and Georgi stood at the barrier, Georgi on the ice, Victor on the narrow surrounding walkway. They were staring at each other. Victor broke away first, smiled a camera-ready smile and greeted Yuuri with enthusiasm. The rough hiss of blades on the ice distracted Yuuri from him as Georgi pushed off the rink barrier. Yuuri only saw Georgi’s face for a moment, but the anger written in the tight lines was obvious.

He must have interrupted a conversation, Yuuri realised, as he watched Georgi and Victor avoid looking at one another on the ice while they warmed up, exchanging only as many words as they absolutely had to. No, not just that, a fight. From the way they stole sideways glances, the ghost of concern and fury that kept touching Georgi’s expression, and those small hints of tension Yuuri could by now read in the way Victor held himself, they really didn’t seem finished talking, either.

_Could I use that?_ Yuuri considered as he skated a well-known sequence of figures, forward, backward, the rote movement allowing him enough room in his mind to think. They might say something that would begin explaining what Yuuri had seen, or perhaps just anything he could trap Victor with. Anger made people careless. The problem was that they would have to think they were on their own. He could wait until Victor snuck off to Georgi’s room again at night, but with how little he’d slept lately, Yuuri didn’t trust himself not to actually doze off and miss his chance. He figured he only had a small window until they either found a moment to themselves away from Yuuri or eventually cooled off enough that they might not continue arguing at all.

He could have simply asked Victor, of course, since he’d held the hard evidence that he wasn’t hallucinating in his hands. However, he didn’t trust Victor to tell him the truth, and maybe he just wasn’t brave enough to give Victor a chance to lie to his face again, which would have broken Yuuri’s already cracked heart a little further. 

So if Victor had been dishonest, Yuuri would have to match him in that, even though guilt bubbled up in him as he started to consider the best ways to tempt Victor and Georgi into doing what he wanted once more.

-

“You never showed me this place before.”

It was a mild evening, warm enough to leave your jacket open and have the wind blowing from the sea be a welcome refreshment. After making sure not to leave them alone at the rink, Yuuri had asked Victor and Georgi if they wanted to come with him to one of his favourite spots at the beach, since Georgi was on vacation here and all.

“It’s not that pretty, I guess. Pebbles all over, so people who want to go sunbathing don’t usually come, and no tourists, of course. It’s a very quiet spot, though. I used to love coming here as a kid,” Yuuri told Victor. “I didn’t know if you were interested.”

“Of course I want to see the spots where you spent your childhood, Yuuri!” Victor answered, taking Yuuri’s hand in his.

“It is fascinating what you can learn about a person by the places they will show you,” Georgi added, thoughtfully, gaze directed at the sea where the sun painted the water blood red as it sank.

Yuuri wondered what Victor could learn about him if he cottoned on to the fact that Yuuri was staging this whole outing for a reason. It was true that he had played here as a child, but the grey pebble beach wasn’t more significant than any other place where he’d happened to kick a ball around with Mari. It did, however, have a lot of big boulders and was bordered on one side by the woods, giving Yuuri plenty of places to hide.

When they had gained sufficient distance from the last waterfront houses, Yuuri reached into his pocket with feigned surprise, as if he’d felt his phone buzzing.

“Mari?” he asked the lock screen. “Oh – no, I forgot about that. I’ll be right back, maybe fifteen minutes.” He lowered his phone and glanced at Victor, who gave him a puzzled look. “I promised Mari I’d help her prepare dinner for a tourist group who are coming today. I’ll head back home. You guys probably want to stay for a bit.”

He hadn’t been able to think of something to do where he didn’t run the risk of Victor simply coming back with him. However, Victor nodded his head. Maybe he had been looking for a chance to get Georgi on his own, too. Yuuri smiled at him, summoning all his willpower to make it look real, and then turned around and walked, his footsteps clicking and crunching on the stones. He slipped past a jutting rock that stood like a small cliff and then veered left up the sloping shore. Instead of following the stripe of grass back into town, he ducked between the broad trunks and bright, young leaves of the coastline forest. In the cover of the trees, he turned and walked his way back to where he had left Victor and Georgi, hands shaking with nerves as he went to his knees and peered out between the thorny branches of a bush.

Victor was looking at the ocean while Georgi ran a pebble he had picked up from the ground between his fingers. For a while, Yuuri heard only the wind whistling in the leaves around him. When he had almost given up hope that the two would speak at all, Georgi looked up from his hand.

“He really loves you, you know?” he told the back of Victor’s head.

“I know.”

Another stretch of silence before Georgi chucked the stone back onto the ground.

“Why don’t you just tell him?” he asked, frustration tinged by something heavier, sadder.

“Just stop,” Victor said, turning around, and Yuuri retreated a little further into the thicket. “I’m not going to.”

“If I were Yuuri, I’d want to be told,” Georgi said, louder, as he closed in on Victor. “I’d want a chance to save the love of my life!”

Victor folded his arms tightly across his chest.

“So would I. But if you were _me_ , you’d never tell Chris, either. You haven’t even told him what you are as it is. I won’t gamble Yuuri’s life for mine.”

Shifting his weight back onto his heels, Georgi lowered his head. It didn’t look like he could refute Victor’s words, but after a few seconds he seemed to settle for another point of attack.

“Yuuri is in danger either way. Don’t you think he will go after Yuuri as soon as he can?”

_He?_ Yuuri thought to himself, as he watched Victor run both hands through his hair.

“That won’t happen. You promised me to take care of him.”

There was an edge of a threat to Victor’s voice, his gaze fixing Georgi, who shook his head wildly.

“For God’s sake, Vitya, I was ten when I made that promise! I didn’t know what it really meant to kill someone. Besides, he might be too strong for me. He knows our plan, too. He could kill me in my sleep before I even know you’ve gone hollow!”

To Yuuri’s great surprise, Victor stepped forward and grabbed the front of Georgi’s shirt, yanking him closer.

“You are _not_ going back on it,” he asserted, colder than Yuuri had ever heard him before.

“I’m not saying I won’t try, but – I don’t _want_ to kill you, Vitya!” Georgi snapped, planting his feet on the ground at shoulders’ width to get in Victor’s face. “How can you not understand that?!”

“He’s not me. By the time he has control, I’ll be long dead. You can’t leave me hanging, Gosha, he’ll go after everyone I cared for just for the fun of it!”

Yuuri didn’t know exactly what made him stand up – perhaps he just wanted to stop the flood of terrible things Georgi and Victor were shouting at each other like that could make them less true. Under his feet, pebbles clattered down to the shore. Georgi and Victor looked up, the shock on their faces matching. Belatedly, Victor let go off Georgi’s shirt, hand sinking slowly.

“Yuuri, didn’t you want to go home?”

“Tell me what’s going on,” Yuuri demanded, brushing the question away with a wave of his hand.


	3. Chapter 3

The two stared up at Yuuri as he walked down the slope, stones clicking beneath his feet while the wind tore at his hair and clothes with cold fingers. Victor tried to give him a smile, but it was too wide, too stiff.

“I heard you,” Yuuri said.

No more lying, no more sneaking. He would have the truth now.

“We just got into a bit of a fight,” Victor started, but Yuuri shook his head at him.

“I saw you earlier, too. That night when you were in Georgi’s room and he…”

Yuuri paused. He still had no words to describe what it was he had seen. Instead, he pulled the phone out of his pocket and willed his fingers not to shake as he found the picture of the bloody knife in Georgi’s bag and turned the screen to them.

“I didn’t imagine it!” he burst out.

They both looked at the picture for a moment before Victor glared at Georgi.

“Why didn’t you put it back?”

“I didn’t have time yet!” Georgi said, holding his hands up in self-defence. “Does it matter now? You’ve probably heard enough,” he added, glancing at Yuuri.

“Enough to know there’s something wrong with you,” Yuuri told Victor.

Hanging his head in defeat, Victor took a deep breath.

“Let’s go home,” he said. “I’ll explain everything, but we shouldn’t talk about it where people can hide in the bushes and listen in.”

-

Yuuri closed the door of his room and sat down at the edge of his bed. Victor grabbed the chair at the desk while Georgi stood leaning against the wall, nervously scuffing his feet against the floor. None of them had spoken a word on the way back, simply hurrying along, barely even looking at each other. The silence persisted now, filling the room and pressing down on them until Yuuri couldn’t bear it anymore.

“Are you… human?” Yuuri asked.

“I am! For now I am. Mostly...”

Victor looked at his knees.

“I saw Georgi pull a thing out of your chest… I think it was a heart. You can’t do that to a human.”

It seemed like a really stupid thing to say because _of course_ you couldn’t, but in the face of Victor’s claims, what else was he supposed to tell him?

Victor gave a humourless little laugh.

“I guess it doesn’t look very human these days, does it?” He pressed a hand against his chest. “The truth is, it’s still what keeps me human even if you wouldn’t think so.”

“So did Georgi build you?” Yuuri asked, weakly.

Georgi shook his head with a frown.

“I can’t build humans. I only know of a couple people in the world who can and I hope neither of them is mad enough to attempt it. I’m just trying to keep Victor whole.”

“I was born this way. My mother was human... so you see, I’m not all monster!” Victor’s smile faltered quickly. “But my father was an incubus.”

Incubus – Yuuri had heard that word before; probably, he realised with a startled, humourless chuckle, in the bestiary of some fantasy RPG he’d played.

“That’s a demon, isn’t it?”

“A demon of desire,” Victor said. “The female kind is a succubus, I think more people know about those?”

Yuuri stared at him.

“Wait, am I in love with you because you used your powers on me?”

It hadn’t felt that way, falling for Victor. It had been gradual, a process that, in retrospect, seemed to have taken half his life, not the sort of rush that he imagined magic would have caused. But then again, what did he know about magic?

“No!” Victor sprang to his feet and took Yuuri’s hands, kneeling before him. “No, I promise. Not any more than I use them on everyone, at least. I may have an aura that draws people to me, but I don’t ensnare anyone on purpose. My powers aren’t strong enough to put anyone under a real spell, anyway.” When Yuuri gave him a slow nod, he leaned back. “As long as I still have my heart, I am more human than anything else. I may not look it if you cut me open – I miss a little more than just a human-looking heart – but it’s still true.”

“But your heart isn’t working right?” Yuuri said, quietly.

Victor drew his lower lip into his mouth for a moment before he turned his eyes up at Yuuri again and sat down by his side on the bed, still holding his hands.

“It’s giving out. And since it’s not exactly like a human heart, there is nothing a doctor could do about it. Georgi is the only one who can help me.”

Yuuri turned his head to Georgi.

“I try,” Georgi muttered, “but I’m at the end of my wits and skills. His heart is more machine than flesh now and if I change more about it, it won’t be human anymore. Then it’s pointless. A metal lump in his chest won’t save him from turning.”

“Why is it failing now?” Yuuri answered, voice rough. Despite everything, he could feel a lump in his throat. Victor had lied to him about so much and it hurt like needles in his flesh, but that couldn’t change from one moment to the next that he loved him. “You’re young.”

“Incubi don’t make children with human women to make humans. They want to make more of their own,” Victor explained. “Usually, my heart would have given out once I was fully grown. When that happens, when I go hollow… there will only be a demon left.”

Yuuri shivered. That was why Georgi was supposed to kill him and why Victor had told him that what would come _after_ wasn’t even him anymore. The conversation he had overheard was slowly starting to make sense, though he almost regretted asking now.

“It was my luck that I happened to skate at the same rink as a witch,” Victor said, glancing up at Georgi with a brief smile. “He recognised what I was when we were just children and he managed to keep my heart going long after when it was supposed to have given its last few beats. I thought I might live until I was forty or even fifty!” He smiled to himself. “But then I met you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“His heart doesn’t work like a human organ,” Georgi said.

Yuuri had guessed that from the myriad of little clock parts Georgi had outfitted it with. He gave him an impatient look.

“There are things that wear human hearts down faster,” Georgi continued. “Victor’s heart, however, is used up by being in love. He knew that, but… he told me it was worth it.”

Georgi sounded more melancholic than disapproving, smiling sadly. Victor squeezed Yuuri’s hands.

“I was right, too.”

Yuuri tore his hands out of Victor’s grasp.

“I’m killing you?” he asked, aghast.

“We all have to die sometime!” Victor claimed. “I’d rather have a short life with you than a long one where I can never love.”

Though Yuuri had managed to glean details pointing in the direction that Victor was dying, it was still too much, too fast, to just have it thrown in his face like this. Trying to swallow down the panic that was reaching for him to pull him under the surface away from all reason, he turned to Georgi.

“You said I could help!” he remembered.

“You can,” Georgi answered.

“I still don’t want that,” Victor said firmly.

“So there is a way?” Yuuri pushed, ignoring him.

“Yes, but it puts you at risk and that’s not something I can take responsibility for. I love you, Yuuri-”

Anger managed to crack through Yuuri’s shock.

“It’s not just your decision!” he yelled, turning to Victor. “You think I’ll just let you die like that if I can do something about it?!”

“No, I know you’re too brave,” Victor said quietly. “That’s why I didn’t want you to know.”

There was a small part of Yuuri that understood. Victor was protective of him, of course he was, Yuuri wanted nothing bad to happen to Victor, either. On the other hand, though, he could feel his patience running on empty. There was just so much he’d been kept in the dark about and now Victor would have died without telling Yuuri?

“Georgi, tell me what I have to do,” he ordered.

“I will,” Georgi said, his voice more lively now, “but I can’t do it with Victor here.”

“Then we’ll go outside.”

Yuuri glanced at Victor, who pressed both hands to his face. For the second time Yuuri had known him, it looked like he was going to cry, but he just managed to catch himself for now, looking directly up him through his fingers.

“I’m sorry, Yuuri,” he whispered.

Yuuri gave him a curt nod before he followed Georgi out of the room.

-

Because he needed fresh air, Yuuri led them to the small back parking lot of Yuu-topia. The sky was growing dark and the wind was still whistling, bringing icy temperatures more fit for winter than spring. Thin grey clouds covered the stars. They stood in the orange light of the old lamps attached to the side of the building.

“Are you sure you don’t want to take a moment to come to terms with the existence of demons and witches? Victor will not die tonight.”

“No,” Yuuri murmured, “if I start thinking about all of that, it’s just going to make it worse.”

He knew, logically, that if Victor was an incubus child and Georgi was a witch, they were not the only ones out there and that if incubi and witches were real, a whole lot of other things probably also were, and that the entire way he viewed the world was likely not quite right. However, down that road was only the kind of stomach-turning fear that made him unable to remember how to put one foot before the other. It wouldn’t do any good and he had no time or it.

There was something small he could conquer now, though.

“When I watched you, uh, operate on Victor, your face…”

“Oh, you mean this?”

Georgi turned to him and Yuuri recoiled as he watched his canine teeth grow and his eyes turn black, with only those razor-thin, shining blue circles in them.

“It’s my other face,” Georgi said calmly, voice once more carrying a hint of a sing-song. “When I use magic, I can’t hide it. I can shift my whole body, but I have to make that happen on purpose.”

Like a stage magician, he ran his hand slowly over his face and restored his human looks. Yuuri noticed that his nails had grown sharper as well, but were returned to a more blunt cut when he had reached his chin.

“It’s really nothing to be afraid of,” Georgi said. “It’s always in me. You just don’t usually see it.”

Hesitantly, Yuuri nodded his head.

“So… what is it that you need me to do?” he asked. “And why me? I’m just a human. You’re the one who can do magic.”

The slight note of playful nonchalance that had entered Georgi’s expression as he showed Yuuri his other face was extinguished immediately.

“I would help if I could, but since the failure of Victor’s heart is due to love, the only cure can be love,” Georgi said gently.

“Sounds like a fairy-tale.”

“Those old storytellers got their ideas somewhere,” Georgi answered with a brief nod of his head. “I can make Victor’s heart last a little longer, but you’re the only one who can truly repair it. He’d be mortal, then – but he’d have a heart like everyone else.”

Yuuri hoped there would be an explanation forthcoming about what exactly Georgi was talking about, but something else weighed on his mind. He’d only used it as his first best chance to escape from Victor for a while as he coped with what he’d heard, but remembering it now, it seemed strange to him.

“Why can’t you tell me about this thing I have to do when Victor is around?” Yuuri asked.

“Because then he would know about it. All Victor is aware of is that love is needed to fix his heart and that’s enough to put you in danger already.”

“What? How?”

Georgi grabbed Yuuri’s shoulder tightly and stared him straight in the eyes.

“You have to take his heart out of his chest like I did. Only it won’t be connected anymore – you will have to cut all veins to his body. You will put the heart back when you are done, but until then Victor will be hollow.” He let go and shook his head. “That demon he’ll be doesn’t feel love for anything in the world and he will do whatever it can to stop you from putting him back together. He’ll see you and the heart as a weakness. That’s why the less Victor knows about what will happen, the better. The demon has all his memories.” He lowered his head. “Victor worries his hollow self will kill you, Yuuri, and I can’t pretend it doesn’t have a good chance.”

Yuuri stared down at his hands. It really was Victor’s life wagered against his own. But there was no choice, was there? Yuuri doubted he would have let a stranger die if he’d been told he was the only one who could save them and this was _Victor_.

“Tell me what exactly I have to do,” he said, fixing Georgi with his gaze.

Georgi gave him a beaming smile with just a hint of sharp teeth.

“I knew I could count on you, Yuuri.”

-

That night, Yuuri and Victor both laid in bed on their backs, not even their hands touching. When Yuuri finally looked over to Victor, though, read the outlines of his head in the dark, he could just make out that he had his face turned to him.

“I shouldn’t have lied to you,” Victor said.

“No.”

“I just didn’t know how to say it. No one but Georgi knows and Georgi isn’t human, either. I don’t even think my mother realised what my father was. And who believes in demons these days?” Yuuri heard Victor sigh, felt the blanket they shared shift as he moved. “I’d do anything to get rid of the part of me that doesn’t make me human, but I can’t. Even if I threw myself off a bridge, it would just kill what makes me myself. The demon would survive.”

“You can’t, but I can,” Yuuri whispered. “That’s another reason you should have told me. We’re supposed to get married, right? You can’t keep secrets like this from me. I don’t want it to be like that between us.”

“Never again,” Victor promised, and, after a small pause, added quietly: “You’d still marry me?”

Would he? Victor was still Victor, after all. He had kept a lot from Yuuri, but his personality, his affection, his mesmerising talent, these things were not constructions, were they? Everything Yuuri had fallen in love with, the person he knew, was not a lie.

“Yes,” Yuuri answered, after a moment.

If they both survived, he would.


	4. Chapter 4

“You can still say ‘no’,” Victor said, kneeling on the ground wedged between their suitcases and Makkachin, who was in the process of greeting them with tail-wagging enthusiasm after they had pushed through the door of their St. Petersburg apartment.

Yuuri took a paper towel to wipe his glasses, which had become near useless in the torrential downpour that had greeted them on their return to Russia.

“I won’t,” he said. “That’s the fourth time you’ve told me today.”

“I’m happy for the time we had together. It’s more than most of my kind ever get. And you’ll find someone new eventually…”

“Stop!” Yuuri snapped, desperately. Makkachin jumped and whimpered and Victor closed his arms around him, looking almost as shocked as his dog. “I don’t want to find anyone else! Do you get that?”

Victor stared at him for a moment longer before he ran both hands through his hair and nodded his head.

“I’m just sorry I put you into this position. It would have been better for us never to meet at all,” Victor said quietly.

Yuuri breathed out and leaned on the kitchen table with one hand.

“I wouldn’t want that, either,” he muttered.

Who knew where he would be now without Victor? He couldn’t say, but this was the kind of love where it felt reasonable to risk himself if need be. How often did you get something like that in life? “I want to spend a lot more time with you,” he said, looking at his feet. “I’m going to save you. Don’t you think I can do it?”

Victor was silent for a moment. When he had moved towards him, Yuuri didn’t know, but suddenly he was standing right in front of him. Yuuri looked up in time to see Victor reaching for him, his hand cupping Yuuri’s chin.

“Of course I believe in you,” he said, with a thin smile, before kissing him. “You can do anything you set your mind to.”

Yuuri tried not to think of his silver GPF medal that should have been gold. He couldn’t allow himself to slip up like this here. Now it meant something.

-

By the time Georgi stopped the car, Yuuri had long lost track of where they were. The suburbs of St. Petersburg had given way to a grey road winding away into rain so thick he could barely look a few feet forwards, until they were in a forest and Georgi pulled off at a seemingly random spot, parking in the muddy grass under a large tree.

Yuuri got out after Georgi, but Victor stayed in the car and Yuuri turned around to look at him in confusion when he felt Georgi’s hand on his shoulder.

“Come with me,” he said.

With his mouth suddenly too dry to speak, Yuuri nodded his head. He closed the car door behind himself, leaving Victor alone with the sound of the rain on the metal roof, and followed Georgi through the dripping branches until they could only see Georgi’s black Lada Vesta in patches of dark through the tree trunks.

Georgi turned around and handed Yuuri a small bag. Inside, Yuuri found a collection of small, delicate tools and a big carving knife.

“You remember everything I told you?” Georgi asked gravely.

“Yes,” Yuuri said. He had been repeating the steps to himself the whole length of the car ride, and probably for the last three days since he had first heard them.

“Here are the handcuffs,” Georgi said, reaching into the bag and lifting one metal loop with a finger. “He should be unconscious for a moment after you have ripped out the heart, so take the chance to put them on him. Since he won’t have fed, he shouldn’t be strong enough to break them.”

“Okay,” Yuuri said quietly. “I think I got it all.”

Georgi had explained it often enough, but given the circumstances Yuuri wasn’t going to complain, even if he knew it by heart.

“Then I should get Victor.” Georgi hesitated, levelling his gaze on Yuuri again with a sad look in his eyes. “I have said this before, too, but remember what he is. Incubi are demons! They feed on people’s emotions and eventually their blood and flesh. When he’s heartless, he cannot love you like he does now. He doesn’t even know what it means to feel for another human being. Do not let him pull you in.”

“I understand.”

Georgi walked back to the car and returned with Victor at his side. They were both wearing long black coats, which didn’t help Yuuri with the feeling that he was going to a funeral.

The winding way Georgi picked through the forest didn’t seem to have any particular direction or goal Yuuri could find, just as the way he had driven them didn’t. Georgi had told Yuuri that to get to the shrine where Victor’s heart could be repaired, he would have to go through a door between spheres.

“Like a parallel dimension?” Yuuri had asked. Nothing would surprise him at this point.

“A little bit. It’s not precisely another world,” Georgi had told him. “It’s always there, just hidden if you don’t know how to see it. Like the moon in the daylight sky. Or my other face.”

Yuuri had, following his own rules about not collapsing his perception of reality quite yet, not inquired further into Georgi’s poetic explanation and instead stacked it with the myriad of questions he would ask when Victor was saved.

Georgi stood still so suddenly that Yuuri almost ran into his back. He looked from side to side and then nodded his head to himself before he cupped his hands before his face and chanted quietly in that strange language again. Then, he placed his palms on two trees that stood a couple of feet apart from each other. The bark under his hands glowed briefly and fire sparked between his fingers. As he stepped back, he was wiping black ash from his hands.

“Here we go,” he said, voice tight, his eyes changing back to blue just as he turned. “Go forwards until you have reached the glade with the structure I told you off, Yuuri. I’m not sure you’d know it’s one if you weren’t looking for it, but it should be the only man-made thing you’ll find, anyway.”

With Victor here, Georgi was picking his words carefully, even though Yuuri knew when they reached the shrine Georgi had told him off, Victor would still be himself. Still, they had agreed not to let him know any more that he really needed to.

Victor wrapped his arm tightly around Yuuri’s shoulders.

“We’ll be back,” Victor said quietly.

Georgi nodded his head. He looked miserable. Yuuri felt likewise. Only Victor was smiling, but with him, that meant very little sometimes.

They stepped between the two trees.

-

The first thing Yuuri noticed was the quiet. They were still in a forest – the same forest, even, as the one Yuuri had been looking at while Georgi had prepared his spell –, but there was no rain pattering. Instead, he saw sunbeams falling through the leaves ahead, painting wavering patches of gold onto the undergrowth. He noticed small flowers that poked their head out of the cover of moss and old leaves and glowed like little red lanterns.

“Have you been here before?” Yuuri asked as they slowly picked their way between the trees.

“Not here specifically, but places like this. Some I need Georgi to open for me, but where the veil is thin I can go on my own,” Victor said. “You should see what St. Petersburg’s Otherworld looks like. It’s breathtaking.”

“You have to show me sometime,” Yuuri said quietly.

Victor nodded his head, arm growing tighter around Yuuri’s shoulders. “I will. I promise I will.”

The forest was a beautiful place. Yuuri saw strange, colourful birds up in the treetops and a black-furred deer watched them until Yuuri turned his head to look at it and it hopped away. It smelled like spring even though the real world was still alternating between snow and rain and days that froze the rain on top of the snow to make every step outside a slippery adventure. He imagined if this had been his first introduction to magic instead of seeing someone holding his fiancé’s mangled heart in his hand, he might think differently about it.

They pushed on, still arm in arm, until the forest thinned and they fought through a tangle of thorny brambles to stand on a meadow.

It would be hard to miss the shrine, though it was only about as big as Yuuri himself. It sat right in the middle of the circle of grass and was built of some grey rock tinged green with moss. Under the gabled stone roof stood a figurine of – something. This being Russia, Yuuri would have expected a Mother Mary or Jesus, but the robed statue could have been everything and nothing, its features long washed away by the weather, no colour but that of the stone. At its toeless lumps of feet stood an empty plate.

“This is it?” Victor guessed.

Yuuri nodded his head.

They didn’t move for a long moment. Finally, Yuuri let go off Victor and wound himself out of his arm. He put the bag Georgi had given him down behind the shrine, where Victor couldn’t see it, and pulled out the knife. Victor smiled briefly at him as he saw him return with it.

“Georgi says I have to cut your heart out,” Yuuri mumbled.

“My heart already belongs to you,” Victor said in a bad attempt at cheering him up. Yuuri couldn’t find it in him to smile.

“It won’t be so bad. I don’t have a lot of blood,” Victor added as he sat down on the grass after taking off his coat and pulling the tight v-neck pullover over his head. “And it’s not like I’ll die from it.”

“Yeah,” Yuuri said quietly.

Only if he fucked it up. Then Victor, or the part of him that made him who he was, would absolutely die from it.

Victor laid down, shivering slightly at the cold that even the golden light didn’t fully burn away (that, now that Yuuri looked up, did not in fact seem to come from a sun but from the sky itself). He looked beautiful, framed by white flowers like sea foam in the green grass which rolled like waves in the wind. Yuuri bowed his head and pressed a kiss on his lips.

“Sorry,” he said, as he tightened his grip on the knife.

He took a deep breath and plunged the blade in, cutting a line along where Victor’s breastbone should have been. A few drops of blood pearled out of the wound. Victor winced once as the blade entered his flesh, then laid still. The feeling of dragging the knife down was terrible, like cutting through tough meat which still rose and fell with breath. Yuuri’s stomach turned, but he continued.

Finally, he had made a wide enough gash that he could pull the halves of Victor’s flesh apart to peer inside. His fingers felt slippery with blood, but there was nowhere near as much of it as there should have been, just a little bordering the wound and coating the inside of his flesh, a charade of human bodily functions. He could even feel harder parts, like carapace, where the bones would have been, that could trick you into thinking you were touching a human if you just put your hand on Victor’s skin. It had been enough to fool Yuuri all those months.

There were some real bones, too, but they were not arranged in any way Yuuri knew from a human. Most prominent was, like a little shrine itself, off-centre to the left, the white ribs bent around the mechanical heart. Threading through the gaps in its half-circle cage were the three large veins that kept the heart coupled to the body.

Holding his breath, Yuuri reached inside and took the heart in hand. It pulsated quickly, the beat like the flutter of a bird’s wings against his fingers, but producing odd mechanical rattles and clicks alongside the thrumming.

Victor gave him a quizzical gaze and, with a final push of courage, Yuuri pulled at the veins. Like Georgi had told him, they were only still connected to the heart because he had plugged them back in. Without that, the heart would have died and sat in Victor’s chest like a black, withered apple long ago. The connectors popped open after a moment.

Victor let out a garbled gasp, chest rising once more, then faltering. He was still like a thing in a way no alive human ever was, even when sleeping. He was dead. The heart in Yuuri’s hand was still beating, though, a small machine.

Yuuri felt tears coming to his eyes, but shook his head. No, focus, he had to focus. He didn’t have much time now. Carefully, he laid the heart down on the plate in the shrine and scrambled for the bag to get the handcuffs. He turned Victor’s body – Victor’s _corpse_ – on its side to shackle his wrists together, breath going too fast, eyes still blurring with tears.

Once this was done, he turned back to the heart and picked up the tools Georgi had given him. Before his heart could heal, all the little makeshift patches Georgi had applied had to be taken out. His hands shook and he couldn’t even see the tiny screws he was trying to remove at first, but finally, he made the screwdriver stick, and breathed in and out, in and out, trying not to think about what laid behind him, and the mechanical work calmed him down a little. It was better than cutting Victor open, at any rate, though not by much. The thing Yuuri eventually held in his hands looked rotten and worm-eaten for all its little drill-holes and chunks missing, and it had given its last failing, desperate beats as he pulled out the clock interface.

He was still staring at it when he heard something behind him move, just a brief shuffle and a quiet hum. Yuuri felt his own heart beat as if it had to do it for two.

Victor’s body had sat up.

He’d known this would happen, Yuuri told himself, he’d known. He couldn’t get distracted now. Victor was handcuffed, anyway, and should be weak. Yuuri forced himself to go down the list he had memorised. He grabbed the knife again and, squeezing his eyes shut, cut a thin line into his arm before he took the heart and squeezed its lukewarm, soft mass against the wound.

Was it enough blood? Georgi had told him it didn’t have to be much. A small sacrifice worked. Yuuri carefully lifted the heart and then pressed it against his lips.

The kiss was more important, he’d been told. He tried to imagine that it was not a failing organ he was kissing, but Victor’s mouth.

Finally, he put the heart back on the plate and closed the rusted iron doors of the shrine, which gave a mournful whine. When the moon showed in the sky, it would be time to put the heart back. Would there even be a moon? Was it just cloudy in some ethereal, magical way he couldn’t tell and that was why he didn’t see the sun? Then maybe he wouldn’t be able to see the moon, either.

And anyway, would he be able to make it that long?

With the speed of ripping a bandage of a bloody wound, Yuuri turned around and stared at Victor sitting there on the meadow, watching him. Despite the gash in his chest, he looked very beautiful, perhaps even more so than he had when he was alive. The lack of breath and pale colour of his skin made him almost seem like a statue, but there was something else Yuuri couldn’t put his finger on, an aura that seemed to calm Yuuri right down. He wondered if this was just the incubus finally working with its full power.

“Hello, Yuuri,” Victor said playfully and gave him a brilliant smile.

-

Yuuri ignored Victor, didn’t even look at him again. It had been his plan from the start, but he didn’t understand why it worked.

Victor still tried to get his attention, of course. He called his name. Eventually he began to talk of skating – not of their relationship, which Yuuri had figured he might do to draw him in, but just of things he was hoping for next season, the songs they had chosen together.

“Yuuri, you’re really mean right now. Think of my ego. I’m not used to people ignoring me,” he would say and chuckle.

He never tried to get closer to Yuuri, or free himself of the handcuffs, though. Even as night fell, he simply sat there, looking at Yuuri.

As the light retreated, leaving only the small red flowers dotted over the meadow like fallen stars to provide light, with not a hint of a moon in the sky, Yuuri risked glancing carefully over at him. He was just _sitting_ there. What had Georgi and Victor been so worried about? The heart had to be almost healed now and he hadn’t even made any attempt to subdue Yuuri. Granted, Victor didn’t know how long it should take, but they had been here for hours.

Victor caught his gaze and laughed out loud.

“You look cute when you’re confused, Yuuri,” he said.

Yuuri made sure that the knife was still at his belt. There probably wasn’t any danger in talking to him with him sitting over here by the shrine while Victor was fifteen feet away.

“I imagined you different,” Yuuri said.

“I imagined me different,” Victor echoed. “I’d never even met an incubus before, you know? But this – it isn’t as bad as I imagined. Though it still scares me not to have a heartbeat.”

He glanced down at himself.

“What does it feel like?” Yuuri asked, despite himself. It was so much better to hear Victor’s voice than sit here in this nowhereplace in silence. He knew not to trust him, but he could still cling to him a little, perhaps.

“I’m strong. I can’t feel my old injury at the shoulder, or that crick in my neck, the one I get when I sleep on my stomach,” Victor said, rolling his head for effect. “I still love you.”

“You don’t. You can’t.”

“You really think all my affection for you was tied to that ugly piece of flesh? You saw it, right? You wouldn’t give meat like that to Makkachin, even.” Victor huffed. “Georgi had loaded it up with so much metal there was barely any heart left. Though… I understand why I wanted to keep it,” he added, thoughtfully. “I thought the same as you. Nothing was more important than loving you, so if I needed the heart for that, I would do everything to have it.” He laughed, throwing his head back, and breathed out in relief, his smile as bright as the sun. “But I don’t. The love I have for you is all in me. Why wouldn’t it be, either? I’m an incubus, the one thing I should understand is being drawn to someone beyond all reason and limits.”

He was _so much_ like Victor that it was hard not to be torn away by the enthusiasm and overflowing affection in his voice. Could a demon really talk like that? Probably. Still, Georgi had admitted to him he had never as much as talked to an incubus, either, and had his knowledge out of old scrolls. What if Victor and Georgi had been mistaken, after all?

“It won’t hurt for you to have the heart back, anyway,” Yuuri said, still.

“That’s true. Though I am much more attuned to this place right now.” For a moment, he stared at the dark, star-less sky. “Wouldn’t it be better for me to be a bit stronger? We wouldn’t have to rely on Georgi so much.”

“Georgi seems to be doing fine.”

“Yes, for sure. But this place… there’s dangers deeper in the woods, Yuuri. I understand now just how much could happen to us,” Victor said, quietly, as he got up.

Yuuri sprang to his feet as well, his hand on the knife. Victor made no motion to protect himself as he stepped closer. Yuuri backed into the shrine, standing protectively before the doors.

“I wish I could stay stronger so I could make sure no harm comes to you. You understand that, right? You went through all this trouble for me, after all.” He gave a quiet laugh. “You’re already much stronger than I am.”

“I’d rather you take the heart,” Yuuri said, as quiet as he was firm.

Victor regarded him for a moment and then smiled in that slightly exasperated way, shoulders sinking, like he often did when he decided he’d lost an argument. The gesture was so well-known that Yuuri couldn’t help but feel at ease for a moment, foolish as he knew it was.

“If you say so,” Victor said easily and winked. “At least you’ll have something to listen to at night with your head on my chest.”

Yuuri stared at him. He was getting whiplash trying to keep up with this. “That’s, uh, that’s not what I meant.”

“Aw, too bad.”

When Victor leaned in, it was lightning-quick. Yuuri barely managed to pull the knife up. Protecting the heart as he was, he hadn’t considered Victor would try attacking him first.

But he wasn’t. He’d pecked him, once, on the lips. Yuuri had expected to feel a tingle like touching stinging nettle, or notice his limbs grow weaker, or something, but nothing happened.

Victor laughed at him standing there, uncertain, with the knife raised.

“What did you think would happen?” he asked, shaking the cuffs as if to make a point, his brilliant camera smile softening into one much more vulnerable, smaller, more honest. “It’s just me, Yuuri. I didn’t think it’d be, but it is, and I have an idea what got me on the wrong track about my heart,” he lowered his voice a little, “and why it’d be better for me if I came out here strong enough to protect the both of us.”

“What?” Yuuri asked, suspiciously.

“Georgi told you a lot about incubi, right?”

Yuuri didn’t answer, but Victor seemed to take it as the ‘yes’ it was.

“Did he tell you a single thing about witches?”


	5. Chapter 5

Yuuri watched Victor in silence as he glanced briefly off to the side.

“Incubi don’t have hearts, it’s true,” Victor said, “but witches don’t have souls.”

“What does that mean?” Yuuri asked, uncertainly. Even having a heart was something completely different for an incubus than it would have been for a human, with it apparently being the seat of emotion and morality, if Georgi was to be believed.

“It means… how do I put it?” Victor said, frowning slightly. “He doesn’t have the spark that makes one human. Witches are like very complicated automatons build of flesh and bones instead of metal, and they run on a force of nature we could call magic instead of electricity.”

“So?” Yuuri asked, carefully. Weren’t humans just flesh and bones that ran on some sort of natural chemistry?

“Maybe he meant well about my heart. I want to think he did. But he was the one always offering to keep it running since he was so convinced my ability to love would vanish if it didn’t. The thing is, though… Georgi doesn’t really know what it means for a human to love. I know – I was born half human.”

“But Georgi has been in love before,” Yuuri protested. It wasn’t like you could miss it! Yuuri wouldn’t even call himself Georgi’s friend and he was still well aware.

“He tries to be.” Victor snorted. “I think that’s why he goes so hard every time. He’s chasing it, but he knows, in truth, he can’t really feel or understand it the way we do. Not that it will go far with Chris, now, anyway. The man is all human, but he would have been a better fit as an incubus than me. He’s just playing around pretending to have a crush, he’ll soon understand it bores him,” Victor added, grinning briefly. “It’s not Chris’ fault this time, though. Georgi is... off. A meat puppet. Humans always sense when something is wrong eventually, even if they can’t put their finger on it. That’s why all his girlfriends left Georgi.”

“Why is that dangerous, though?” Yuuri asked, voice trembling. Georgi was just about the only signpost he had in this strange world, if it was pointing in the wrong direction…

The knife slipped from his fingers. He hadn’t wanted it to, but his grip had been unsure. He didn’t kneel to pick it up.

“Georgi wouldn’t let me go as I am now. He’s so convinced of his ideas that he thinks I have to die if I don’t have a heart. You overheard that, right? He even had me convinced to let him kill me. Hell, he had all that power over me all those years, making me think I’d lose myself if he didn’t help me. Maybe that’s what he can’t bear to give up.” He shook his head. “Or maybe he’s just misguided. Either way, Yuuri, he doesn’t understand the love we feel for each other. It’s not his fault, but he can’t. He even thought I could be dangerous to you. What man who knows about love would think that? What we have is so much bigger than that old, broken heart.” He locked gazes with him. “You wouldn’t want me to die at his hand, would you?”

“No,” Yuuri said, choked.

Victor leaned in to kiss Yuuri. The fog in his head and tiredness in Yuuri’s bones spread only after a few seconds; they did not come quick enough for Victor to stop the switchblade from going into his ribs.

_Too late_ , Yuuri told himself, as he pushed Victor off of him. He shouldn’t have let this much happen. For a moment, Victor had had him.

Victor’s eyes were narrowed slightly, deliberating Yuuri where he stood, the switchblade sticking out of his side. Victor opened his mouth again, but then stopped himself. His shoulders gave a twitch and Yuuri heard a snap like a whip. Victor’s hands parted behind his back, the broken chain dangling from the silver cuff around his left hand. He threw himself forward at Yuuri.

Yuuri knew immediately that it was his fault. He’d fed Victor with that second kiss, leaning into it for just a moment, the love for him overflowing as he considered the image of his corpse again, as he’d seen it just hours ago, wondering whether he would survive seeing it again at Georgi’s feet and this time with no chance to get Victor back. It was exactly what Victor and Georgi had both warned him off.

If it hadn’t been for what Victor had said just before, maybe he wouldn’t even have thought to put his hand on the switchblade he’d pocketed this morning. He’d probably be dead already.

Yuuri dodged out of the way of Victor’s attack. With a start, he then realised he had given Victor free access to the shrine, but Victor ignored it. Instead, he pivoted for Yuuri again. There was the hunger of a starving beast in his eyes.

It was not a good way to fight, Yuuri realised, as he blocked a blow to his face with his arm and just barely avoided a punch to his throat, then doubled over as he was kicked in the stomach. Victor was the one who wanted to kill, and that counted for everything. Yuuri didn’t even want to risk making a grab for the switchblade Victor had torn from his flesh and discarded to stab Victor a second time. What if that would leave him too hurt to be put back together? What if he’d die at _Yuuri_ ’s hand?

Yuuri turned just in time to escape Victors fist, but the circle of the handcuff around his wrist grazed him and left a bloody scrape on Yuuri’s cheek. He staggered sideways, gasping in pain. He wouldn’t be able to avoid Victor forever. But he had to think of this thing not as him, but as a monster that was holding him hostage. He was not yet lost to Yuuri.

He was here to save Victor’s life, wasn’t he? So he’d have to fight for him.

Yuuri pretended to stumble backwards and fell right into a small heap of stones that had caught his eye while he avoided Victor’s strikes. As he’d expected, Victor was right on top of him. Sharp teeth glinted as he opened his mouth, shining white in the moonlight.

_Moonlight!_

Seeing the white ball in the sky gave Yuuri the last push he needed. He grabbed a fist-size rock and slammed it against Victor’s temple.

Dazed, Victor fell sideways on the ground, growling like a wounded animal. Yuuri tore free of him and ran to the shrine, throwing the doors open. On the plate at the unknown figure’s feet sat a heart, whole and human, beating, with just three holes where, Georgi had promised, the veins would grow attached if he put them back.

Yuuri had no time to admire it. Victor was already struggling to get back up. Yuuri threw himself down on him, knocking the wind out of Victor, and pressed his knee down into his stomach, blocking his head, which was raised to snap at him, with an arm. Victor grabbed it with both hands trying to dislodge it as Yuuri shoved his hand into the open wound on his chest, placing the heart back into the bone cage in which it had sat.

A stab of white-hot pain went through him. Victor had rammed his fangs into his flesh. Seconds now, Yuuri guessed, and Victor would grow strong enough on his blood to throw him off. He scrambled for the veins in the hollow of Victor’s chest cavity and finally got a hold of two of them. He could barely see, half his attention on keeping Victor down, light only falling into Victor’s chest where Yuuri’s arm held the wound open, and so he oriented himself by touch on the slippery organ. Just when panic threatened to overwhelm him, he finally felt an indent, and shoved a vein close. It stuck, like glue, and the hold of Victor’s jaws on his arms grew slack. With shaking fingertips, blinded by tears of pain, Yuuri searched for the second connection point. He found it right next to the third. Fishing for the last vein inside Victor was barely disturbing now, with his fiancé having almost taken a piece out of his arm. He pushed it into its connection point.

Victor’s head dropped back into the grass. There was blood all over his mouth and chin. His teeth still looked a little too sharp, but as Yuuri blinked the tears away, the effect dissipated. Then, with a start, Victor’s eyes opened. He sat up, staring wildly, and Yuuri found himself looking for the stone, or the switchblade, or the carving knife.

“Yuuri?” he rasped.

“Victor?”

When Victor threw his arms around Yuuri’s neck, Yuuri wondered for a moment if he was going to break his neck. He didn’t. He started crying instead, kissing Yuuri’s face, probably leaving bloody smears all over it. Yuuri wrapped his good arm around Victor’s shoulders. He wondered if he was going to fall unconscious as he let his forehead drop against Victor’s shoulder, but he could still hear Victor sobbing quietly and feel the beat of his heart against his arm.

-

It took a while for them to get up and start taking in the whole situation. Victor ran to fetch his pullover and wrapped it around Yuuri’s bleeding arm.

“Georgi can help you,” he said, trying the sleeves into a knot.

“I stabbed you,” Yuuri said, blankly.

“Don’t worry about it. It hurts, but I’ll live.” Victor touched the red spot on his own cheek. “You were smart to go for the rock. Stabbing me more wouldn’t have done much.”

Yuuri nodded his head. One-handed, he gathered up the blood-stained clock parts and put them back into the bag. Victor added the switchblade and the carving knife. Yuuri slung the bag over his shoulder and Victor didn’t protest. It had all the weapons and Yuuri wasn’t the one who had just tried to kill his lover.

“Oh God, Yuuri. I remember it all. I thought I – he – it felt like you believed me, for a second.”

“I think I did,” Yuuri admitted. “That’s why I let you kiss me. I know I shouldn’t have, but… it was _you_. I just kept enough of my head together to realise you probably couldn’t mean all that, no matter how much I wanted it to be true.”

“I understand,” Victor said sadly, holding Yuuri’s hand. He looked up with curiosity, then. “What tipped you off?”

They were walking between the dark trees.

“The way you spoke about Georgi and Chris. Not even what you said. really, just that you smiled when you said it. Like it was funny to you that Georgi is desperate because he can’t love, or that Chris can’t get over himself even if he wants to.” Yuuri dropped his gaze. “It makes sense an incubus knows really well how to pretend to be in love, but it also makes sense he wouldn’t know how a friend acts. I think even if you really believed all that, you wouldn’t think it’s something to laugh about.”

“I was just saying things in the hope that you would have only me to rely on,” Victor said quietly. “But you’re right. Of course, I should have trusted my Yuuri to know me so well.”

“Not well enough to not feed that demon…”

“You got through it, though, which is more than could be said of a lot of people who met an incubus.” Victor beamed at him. “And you got me a brand-new heart.”

“Yeah,” Yuuri said with a weak smile. He was still fighting to catch up with what had just happened, but slowly, joy began to wink through his shock and confusion. Victor would live, as himself.

Everything that had come before they had stepped out onto the meadow was a blur in Yuuri’s mind, but Victor traced their way back to the two trees between which they had stepped on their way into the Otherworld. The glow of red flowers on the ground disappeared, and in the distance, Yuuri heard a motor growing louder, then quieter, then silence. The wind shook drops from the leaves down on them, but it had stopped raining. They stepped up to the street to see Georgi cower on the hood of his car. When he raised his head, the frown on his face remained for a moment before it was replaced by a wide smile.

“Yuuri!” he called. “You made it!”

He looked ready to cry and Victor laughed and went over to give him a hug.

“I bit Yuuri,” he said, leaning back. “It was quite a fight. You have to take a look at it.”

“I can see that,” Georgi said, glancing between them. Though they were wearing coats, Yuuri knew even their faces bore the evidence of their battle. “Can you wait until we get back to the city, Yuuri? I have more ways to fix it there.”

Yuuri nodded his head. As they climbed back into the car, Victor joined Yuuri on the back seat, holding his good hand with a smile.

-

When they returned home, Makkachin sniffed at them and then hopped up the couch instead of licking Yuuri’s outstretched hand as he usually would.

“He’s never liked the smell of the Otherworld,” Victor said. “We’ll have to take a shower before he’ll pay attention to us again.”

“I can’t blame him. I could do without seeing it for a while, too,” Yuuri said, carefully pulling off his coat. Georgi had bandaged his arm with some dried leaves and given Yuuri tea to drink in the morning. According to Victor, the sharp-smelling mixture was what led Yakov to believe his skaters preternaturally lucky – they recovered even from broken bones in a matter of a fortnight.

“Only reality for now,” Victor promised, taking Yuuri’s face in his hands and pressing a kiss to his cheek.

“You’ll have to explain a lot about ‘reality’ to me, too,” Yuuri reminded him.

“We’ll have time. Tonight was exciting enough.” Victor smiled. “I’d rather enjoy my new lease on life in this world with you.”

Yuuri nodded his head and watched Victor as he pulled off his coat and shoes. When he turned his head into the light of the overhead lamp, there was a moment when it looked just as blank and emotionless as it had before Victor had charged at him, and then the shadows shifted and Yuuri saw him smiling at some thought in his head.

It would take a while to get over the fact that the man who had tried to kill him also wore his future husband’s face, but Yuuri was sure he could do it. He had a whole life with Victor ahead of him to shake off the impressions of tonight and remind himself who Victor really was – a kind and loving man, even if maybe not a human.


End file.
